11.12.10

Links 11/11/2010: The Linux 2.6.37 FS Benchmarks, MPlayer Turns Ten

Posted in News Roundup at 10:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux
- Distributions
- Devices/Embedded
Free Software/Open Source
Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

Does the Operating System Still Matter? Part 4

We also perceive the shift quantitatively. In October of 2009, “opensolaris vs linux” was the #1 incoming query to RedMonk properties; “linux vs opensolaris” was #7. In October of this year, “opensolaris vs linux” is #13; “linux vs opensolaris” is not in the Top 100.

The simplest explanation for this might be the decline and acquisition of Sun, and the subsequent deemphasis by new owner Oracle to the Solaris brand generally and OpenSolaris specifically. But for this to be true, we should have expected to see commensurate gains to other operating system related terminology, be that Windows, Linux or combinations of both.
Deep Thoughts on Being a Geek

It was a blog post by Jeff Hoogland that started the ball rolling. Entitled “I am a Linux geek and proud of it,” the post chronicles the story of a misbehaving netbook that led to Hoogland’s realization.

Hoogland fixed the netbook’s problem without too much trouble, causing him to observe, “Something that at one point would have taken me hours to figure out (and odds are would have required a few forum posts) I had resolved in minutes.”

Few of us today look like the classic stereotype of the Unix geek, Hoogland concludes. Rather, “Linux users come in all shapes and sizes.”
Desktop
- Why I love Ubuntu
  
  This is such a huge benefit of Ubuntu (and Linux in general), it is for this very reason that I now do all my college assignments at home, simply because I get them all done way faster. I find it so much faster to multi-task on Ubuntu, although this is limited somewhat because I have a very old computer (Pentium 4 from 2003), but Ubuntu solves this by not frustrating me, it doesn’t throw error dialogs at me, it doesn’t waste precious CPU cycles telling me that there is a serious problem, it just quietly works through it and return’s to normal.
- ZaReason CEO Keynotes at FOSDEM
  
  Cathy Malmrose, the CEO of independent Linux vendor ZaReason, Inc., is a keynote speaker at the upcoming FOSDEM conference in Brussels on Feb. 5-6, 2011. FOSDEM bills itself as “the biggest free and non-commercial event organized by and for the community.”
Audiocasts/Shows
- Linux Link Tech Show #375 11 10 10 [Ogg]
- Podcast Season 2 Episode 21
  
  In this episode: Ubuntu may ditch the X Window system for Wayland, Fedora 14 has been released and Nokia takes Symbian back from the Symbian Foundation. Share our fortnight’s discoveries and hear whether we think Qt and KDE should merge APIs.
Kernel Space
- New course will teach developers to make Linux device drivers
  
  Training and consulting company LinuxCertified has announced a new course that will help developers learn how to create device drivers for the Linux operating system.
  
  Linux is an open-source operating system that is available for free. Although it trails in popularity behind its commercial competitors, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux has become increasingly widespread.
- Linux Kernels, Blog-o-Frenzy And Why You Should Care
  
  Fall is in the air in New England and I am still sifting through the thousands of product announcements from Oracle OpenWorld 2010 (held in September). One of the questions I keep being asked by solution providers is “What does this new Oracle Linux Kernel mean to me?” Knowing how astute the VAR Guy’s readers are, I jumped at the chance to share my thoughts on this exciting announcement.
- Graphics Stack
  - The Linux 2.6.37 Kernel With EXT4 & Btrfs
    
    Now that the Linux 2.6.37 kernel merge window is closed and this next major release is in the middle of its development cycle, we have new benchmarks to publish looking at the file-system performance of Btrfs and EXT4 compared to earlier releases. The Linux file-system performance is under constant evolution as shown by our five years of Linux kernel benchmarks and more recent file-system-focused articles such as looking at EXT4 and Btrfs regressions in Linux 2.6.36, solid-state drive Linux benchmarks, and even ZFS-FUSE benchmarks, among other similar articles.
Applications
- Ten years of MPlayer
  
  I want to thank you all for the contributions, patches, bugs, docs, testing etc.
- Use Your Linux PC to Teach Students Basic Science
  
  If you’ve ever experienced one of your kids saying “Mom, how do I solve this math problem? What should I do? I’m bored”, then you’ll appreciate KDE Edutainment to help you teach your kids basic mathematics and other sciences.
- One does not imply the other
  
  Because judging your own ability is inherently subjective. Just as an example, I see myself as a beginner and probably always will. People graduate from university on a daily (monthly? quarterly?) basis with computer and Linux proficiency that far outstrips mine.
  
  On the other hand, I have met more than one person — to include Windows “power users,” to be completely unfair and off-topic — who gave me an irritating smirk and the classic line from Brazil, that “Computers are my forte.” And then couldn’t turn the stupid thing on.
  
  But above and beyond all that, I can’t say that I’m too thrilled with another post that somehow splices Linux’s learning curve with the mystique of the command line.
- 3 Beautiful Conky Configurations
  
  The first 2 Conky setups above are very easy to configure – just install conky, then copy the extracted files (look for hidden files and folders too) into your folder and that’s it. Conky Ken takes a bit longer to set up but it’s not all that difficult, however I couldn’t get the weather to work (it might have something to do with might location though). For each of the 3 Conky setups above, download the archive and see the README for exact installation instructions.
- Proprietary
  - A bunch of extension and fresh UNIX fixes
  - RockMelt: 5 reasons to love it and one big reason not to
- Instructionals/Technical
- Games
  - Learning with TuxMath
    
    In these games, the asteroids are destroyed by typing a number which will reduce the number (or fraction) on the asteroid. So, for example in the “factors” game, if the asteroid were marked “51”, then either “3” or “17” would cause it to break into separate “3” and “17” rocks.
  - PlayOnLinux Brings Windows Games & Programs To Linux
    
    Taking much of the pain out of using Wine, PlayOnLinux is a must-have application for any Linux gamer. Providing automated installation scripts for dozens of games – and a wide variety of other software including Google Sketchup, Photoshop and AutoCAD – this program is worth checking out if you’re dependent on Windows software but prefer Linux overall.
  - Urban Terror HD: Going Away From Open-Source
    
    It’s been two years since the release of Urban Terror 4.1, an open-source first person shooter powered by the ioquake3 engine that started out originally as a Quake 3 mod. Extensive work has been made towards the next release, Urban Terror 4.2, with significant improvements being made from new maps and visuals to a new graphics renderer. However, this past week the Urban Terror developers announced some rather surprising changes, which includes Urban Terror no longer being distributed as an open-source, GPL game.
    
    Urban Terror 4.2 is so radically different from Urban Terror 4.1 that it’s not going to even be called “4.2″, but rather is being renamed to “Urban Terror HD.” While renaming the title to Urban Terror HD isn’t a big deal, the big news is the departure from the open-source Quake 3 code-base to now being an official Quake 3 licensee with an official copy of the Quake 3 engine code-base.
  - Dungeon crawler game for IM-ME (and Linux)
    
    Source code is available and for those of you who don’t own this pretty handheld, the game can also be compiled in Linux.
Desktop Environments
- K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
  - Latinoware: first day
    
    Ok, let’s stop talking about Paraguay. This first day we had all KDE lectures, tomorrow we are going to have Sandro’s mini-course (Desktop and Mobile Developing with Qt 4.7) and in the (almost) last event of the last day my mini-course about programming with DBus (next Friday).
Distributions
- Evaluating desktop Linux systems mini review
  
  My favorite every day distribution, aptosid, very much a hobbyist distribution, not anywhere near as simple as SimplyMEPIS or PCLinuxOS to manage for beginners, but praised by veterans, aptosid, once called sidux, and evolved from another KNOPPIX inspired distribution, Kanotix, has been described as Debian Sid on mood stabilizers and steroids.
- Distro Developers Need Dollars!
  
  Every little bit helps so if you can let a few ads load in your browser, and even click a few you are interested in then you might be able to help support your favorite distros without even having to make a donation.
- Some interesting stats about gentoo portage tree
  
  There is interesting question: How old are ebuilds in tree? (in term when they were touched last time)
- Red Hat Family
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6: Why to Upgrade – Why to Hold Off
    
    We lease all of our hardware, which poses some interesting problems in itself, but also gave us a three or four year cycle for upgrading the operating system and software stack. In the past few years, we have transitioned to virtual machines, and gained a bit of hardware independence. Now the hardware can come and go, and we can run the same operating system image without the need, or opportunity, to upgrade the operating system.
  - Fedora
    - Fedora 14 review
      
      Enjoy more images from Fedora 14.
    - Fedora 15 Has A Release Schedule, But Will It Be Met?
      
      The Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) has approved the release schedule for Fedora 15, the next release of this community Red Hat Linux operating system that was recently codenamed Lovelock.
      
      If this Fedora 15 release schedule is met, the official Lovelock release will come on the 10th of May. The alpha release is slated for the first of March and the beta release is penciled in for 5 April. Other important milestones include the feature freeze being on 8 February (and that’s also the point at which Fedora 15 will be branched from Rawhide) and the release candidate on 26 April.
      
      Of course, this is just the expected release schedule, which may very well slip judging by past Fedora releases. Fedora 14 was going to ship on time as a new feature based upon their poor track record of sticking to their release schedule due to engineering/technical delays, but that didn’t happen. Will Fedora 15 ship on time? We will see. Regardless, Fedora 15 should make it out in May of 2011.
    - Enhanced Fedora Fusion Linux 14 Mere Weeks Away
      
      One of the main complaints with Fedora is the lack of proprietary drivers and multimedia support. That’s where Fusion comes in. Fusion Linux aims to ship all the best software that will make for a superior desktop experience. The upcoming version, based on the new Fedora 14, is estimated to be about two or three weeks away, but early testers can try the release candidate announced today.
    - Insight into Insight.
      
      One of the Fedora related things I’m still involved with is Fedora Insight, a Drupal instance I and a few others are trying to learn and launch. We want the capability to pass on interesting tidbits from the Planet, Fedora Weekly News, and even original media in a simple way.
      
      And we love Drupal, especially because it’s packaged in Fedora and EPEL, and because of its very practical and compatible approaches to licensing (GPL!). However, we could use some help with our work.
    - Fedora bars SQLNinja hack tool
      
      Fedora Project leaders have banned a popular penetration-testing tool from their repository out of concern it could saddle the organization with legal burdens.
      
      The move came on Monday in a unanimous vote by the Fedora Project’s board of directors rejecting a request that SQLNinja be added to the archive of open-source applications. It came even as a long list of other hacker tools are included in the bundle and was harshly criticized by some security watchers.
      
      “It seems incredibly short sighted to reject software based on perceived legal usage,” said Jacob Appelbaum, a full-time programmer for the Tor Project. “They have decided to become judges of likely usage based on their own experience. That is a path of madness.”
- Debian Family
  - People behind Debian: Joey Hess of debhelper fame
    
    I decided recently to publish interviews from Debian contributors and I picked Joey Hess as my first target. He’s one of the few who have heavily influenced Debian by creating software that have become building blocks of the project, like the debian-installer (Joey uses the shorthand d-i to refer to it).
    
    My questions are in bold, the rest is by Joey (except for the additional information that I inserted in italics).
  - Re: Squeeze Artwork: selection of default theme
  - Canonical/Ubuntu
    - Give Ubuntu Unity a Try (Install it in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick)
      
      Unity is the official Ubuntu Netbook Edition’s new interface and is supposed to replace Gnome as the default environment for the forthcoming Ubuntu releases. Don’t worry, Gnome spin off would continue to be available for all Gnome lovers.
    - Compiz-based Unity coming to PPA tomorrow
      
      And so it begins! The Compiz-backed version of Unity – to be the default Ubuntu 11.04 desktop – has arrived on Launchpad.
      
      For those with itchy fingers and brave hearts ‘Unity Compiz’ (‘Compinity’ anyone?) will be available for installation via a PPA tomorrow according to Ubuntu Desktop Experience lead njpatel.
    - PPA!
    - Back to the future
      
      Looking forward, I’ll be thinking about the longer term direction for the Ubuntu platform. The platform is the layer of Ubuntu which makes everything else possible: it’s how we weave together products like Desktop Edition and Server Edition, and it’s what developers target when they write applications. Behind the user interfaces and applications, there is a rich platform of tools and services which link it all together. It’s in this aspect of Ubuntu that I’ll be investing my time in research, experimentation and imagination. This includes considering how we package and distribute software, how we adapt to technological shifts, and highlighting opportunities to cooperate with other open source projects.
Devices/Embedded
- Phones
  - Nokia/MeeGo
    - MeeGo 1.1 vs Ubuntu Netbook Edition: Comparative Review
      
      In late 2007 ASUS released the Eee PC, a tiny little laptop that sparked a whole new wave of innovation in the computer world.
      
      It was the first in the family of ultra mobile computing devices that now comprises a wide range of netbooks from all major manufacturers and even paved the way for a more widespread acceptance of the tablet form-factor.
- Sub-notebooks
  - Cloud OS crowd readies own-brand netbook
    
    Jolicloud, the company that offers a cloud-centric Linux distro for netbooks, is getting into the hardware business.
  - Jolibook netbook announced by Jolicloud
    
    According to the makers of Jolicloud, the popular cloud-based netbook distro, something big is about to happen in the world of little computers. Introducing the Jolibook – the ‘Fast, Fun & Connected’ Jolicloud 1.1-powered netbook…
    
    “Designed for people who live in the cloud, it’s running the new Jolicloud 1.1 and comes pre-loaded with Chromium, Facebook, Spotify, VLC, Skype, and a bunch of cool apps that are one click away,” reads the teaser card sent out to press this morning.

Free Software/Open Source

Web Browsers
- Mozilla
  - Firefox 4 Beta 7: Moving Toward Completion, Updated Extensions On Deck
    
    The open source arena is currently loaded with good battles to watch, with both operating systems of various stripes and applications fighting fiercely for dominance, but my favorite open source battle of all is the one going on between open source browsers. Although the majority of users still use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, its market share has tumbled from where it was a few years ago. We’ve made the point many times that Firefox and Google Chrome are setting the innovation bar for browsers. That’s why it’s exciting to see Mozilla arrive at Beta 7 of Firefox 4, which you can download now or which you’ll be automatically updated to if you’re testing the betas, and which is loaded with challenges to Google’s fast-growing Chrome browser.
  - Why can’t I access Gmail in Firefox?
    
    This is a well-known problem caused by a Firefox add-on called Integrated Gmail. Google recently changed the way in which Gmail works (something it does all the time) and this caused the add-on to malfunction and behave in the way you describe.
  - Your guide to Firefox 4 and its shiny new features
    
    Firefox 4, with the release of Beta 7, is as good as finished. From now until its release in early 2011, no new features will be added, no significant changes will be made — Beta 7 is, for all intents and purposes, Firefox 4.
  - Blazing fast Firefox 4 beta 7 impresses
    
    We benchmarked beta 7 on an Ubuntu desktop computer with a six-core Intel i7 980X processor. It blazed through the SunSpider test in a mere 208ms. On the same computer, Chromium 6 took 224ms. Mozilla’s efforts to improve JavaScript performance are clearly paying off. The beta also opens and closes nearly as fast as Chrome and offers smoother scrolling and tab switching than the previous version.
    
    Users who want to try out the beta themselves can download it from Mozilla’s website. For additional details, you can refer to the official release notes. The final release is expected to arrive next year.
  - Mozilla releases Firefox social networking extension
    
    WEB BROWSER OUTFIT Mozilla has released F1, an extension that allows users to share content through social networks.
    
    The extension aims to do away with the numerous “share” buttons that have popped up all over the web with webmasters trying to tap into the advertising potential of various social networks. The service, which is still being expanded, currently supports Facebook, Twitter and Gmail services, all of which use the Oauth protocol for authentication.
Databases
- Is MySQL open core?
  
  [L]ong before the Nazi comparison it is inevitable that someone will ask “is MySQL open core?”.
Oracle
- Apple Joins OpenJDK To Open Source Mac OS X Java Technology
  
  Apple just announced that it is joining Oracle’s OpenJDK project to open source Mac OS X. OpenJDK is a free and open source implementation of the Java programming language.
  
  According to the release, Apple will “contribute most of the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client.” OpenJDK will open source Apple’s Java technology to developers.